Use AIDS funds efficiently — AIDS Campaigners

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 (Graphic Business Pg 11)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah, Vienna, Austria
TWO distinguished AIDS campaigners, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Microsoft founder Bill Gates have called for more efficient use of funding in the fight against AIDS to ensure that people who need it actually get it.
In separate addresses at the ongoing six-day 18th International AIDS conference in Vienna, Austria,  the two said that in many countries, foreign assistance, including money for AIDS, did not get to the people the assistance was intended for.
Addressing a large crowd of participants at the conference centre,  the former president said "I think in too many countries, too much money goes to pay for too many people to go to too many meetings, get on too many airplanes.Keep in mind that every dollar we waste today puts a life at risk."
Mr Clinton also called on aid groups to remember that the world was "awash in trouble" and hurting under the impact of the financial crisis and, therefore, do well to make do with was provided for combating the epidemic.
"It is easy to rail at a government and say why doesn't the government give us more money if they're giving somebody else money," he said. "But the government gets its money in most of these countries from tax payers who have lower incomes today than they did two years ago."
In order to have the "moral standing" to ask for more funding, organizations should make governments believe that "we're doing our job faster, better and cheaper."
He however urged governments nad organisations of the developed countries to stand by rhe  promises to assist in HIV and AIDS activities for the benefit of all people.
"I will soon be 64 years and my wish is to see all my grand children and all other grand children who will not die of AIDS", he stressed.
On other related issues, President Clinton pointed out that his travels through Africa had made him aware that there were still many challenges because systems and structures in those countries did not work and called strigent measures in that direction.
For his part, Mr Gates identified failure of more doner support to reach the people it was intended to help as one of the  major challenges to the AIDS prevention effort.
He touched on the fact that many prevention efforts were not targeting the communities where HIV transmission was the highest and  went ahead to mention high risk groups such as men sleeping with men (MSM) injection drug users and sex workers as those who needed help but had been neglected.
Speaking on the topic "Building on Success: A Roadmap for HIV Prevention" he said many countries were not using available data to make funding decisions "instead politicians are making decisions based on fear and stigma".
Mr Gates said many of those policitians did not want to associate themselves with people who engaged in behaviour that made them uncomfortable, forgeting the fact that recognising such people and providing appropriate interventions for them would  help in fighting the epidemic.
Quoting from the "Know Your Epidemic" report published this year by UNAIDS, AIDS campaigner said 10 per cent of HIV infections in Kenya for example were due to sex between men adding trhat in some coastal regions, the figure could be as high as 20 per cent.
In Russia, the epidemic was contentrated among injecting drugs users yet the Russian government had gutted them and cut budget for programmes towards such groups to zero and rather shifted the money to the general population.
Currently more than 33 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, at least 7,400 people become infected each day and nearly 5,500 die daily from AIDS related diseases.